This article originally appeared in the July 2013 issue of Architectural Digest.

Screenwriter-producer Aaron Sorkin, the man behind the television shows Sports Night and The West Wing and the film scripts for A Few Good Men and Moneyball, is famous for his nimble, incisive dialogue. That commanding style has garnered him an Academy Award—for The Social Network—and a host of other accolades. But when it comes to his personal aesthetic sensibilities, Sorkin is far less self-assured: “It’s not that I have bad taste,” he says. “It’s that I have no taste.”

So naturally Sorkin sought help when handed an uninspiring blank slate of an office on the lot of Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood, where he directs the production and writing team for his latest hit, HBO’s *The Newsroom,*starting its second season on July 14. Looking to smarten the place up and add a little flair, he called in Martyn Lawrence Bullard, the high-octane interior decorator to the stars, TV personality, and Tinseltown boulevardier with taste and style to spare.

Bullard knows Sorkin well, having previously worked on two of his homes as well as his office at Warner Bros. “Aaron loves that 1940s writer’s atelier vibe, so I designed the space as a cross between a classic Hollywood creative office and the executive suite of a studio powerhouse,” the decorator explains.

In practical terms, Bullard translated that précis into an assortment of dark-wood cabinetry and antique furniture—notably an imposing 19th-century partners desk—along with 1940s French leather club chairs, vintage lighting, a striped grass-cloth wall covering, sea-grass carpeting, and a plush velvet sofa that’s ideal for courting inspiration (or taking naps). “It’s all very masculine and old Hollywood,” Bullard notes, “but the floor and wall coverings give it a slightly hipper, more contemporary feel.”

Sorkin applied his own stamp with a collection of black-and-white photographs of great American writers such as Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Clifford Odets, as well as vintage pen-and-ink sets and other tokens of his craft and framed pictures of his 12-year-old daughter, Roxy.

Of course, no office for a writer of Sorkin’s caliber would be complete without a proper trophy case, and Bullard has obliged with a massive custom-made cabinet laden with all manner of gold and crystal laurels—the Emmy statues alone could fill a wheelbarrow. “If I’m feeling bad,” says Sorkin, “I sometimes look over there and think, ‘I had a hard time when I was writing The Social Network. And, you know, that turned out okay.’”

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